


Whom would you consider wise?

by JohnHHolliday (Methleigh)



Category: 19th Century US RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Methleigh/pseuds/JohnHHolliday





	Whom would you consider wise?

John closes his eyes and leans back. He has learned painfully and eventually that even the best of men are not _always_ wise. He knows that, even if men are good; even if they are forgiven; even if they have never done wrong, that their portions of wisdom are frighteningly transitory. They are nothing on which one may rely at all. He finds, to his surprise, that wisdom is not something that is meaningful to him. It is a result of circumstances, to John's mind. The things he cares about are intent and struggle. He might as well have been asked whom he has known who has possessed the most happiness. Wisdom is a matter of luck. John is a gambler, but he knows luck is really odds. It is tendency in a web of causality tangled beyond comprehension. If one chooses the correct path one has wisdom. That is how it is usually defined. For John, choice is a bargaining - a balance of sacrifice and ethics. The ways in which others make these choices do not let him grant anyone wisdom, exactly. The more he thinks of it, the more he doubts the very existence of wisdom. If a person is responsible for himself and if he is aware rather than merely acting according to the tides of fortune, then choice is a chaos of pain and triumph based on jumbled trades and bargains of need, want, love, loyalty and near-blind striving towards the warm golden light of Right that only shines in one's own conception. This chaos and clash of will makes men beautiful and all that they are. It is what brings out their best and worst. John loves. The feeling and knowledge are music within him - sometimes a full celestial choir, sometimes a plaintive single line of tune, but always haunting and imperative. This has nothing to do with wisdom. Nothing.


End file.
